Kings Park & Botanic Gardens, Western Australia

Our Western Australia travel guide helps you discover this often overlooked part of the country. With white sand beaches, remote outback trails, coral reefs and abundant wildlife on land and in the sea, as well as fascinating Aboriginal culture, Western Australia packed with exciting things to see and do and beautiful places to visit. Our Western Australia travel guide offers information from local people passionate about where they live as well as protecting the environment and supporting local communities.

Kings Park & Botanic Gardens, Western Australia

Kings Park and Botanic Gardens, Western Australia

Located on the Mt Eliza escarpment with panoramic views over the city of Perth and the Swan River, Kings Park & Botanic Garden covers an area not far short of 1,000 acres (400ha). Only about a third of this area has been landscaped into manicured lawns, flower-beds, terraces, cycleways and picnic spots with the remainder still given over to virgin bushland.

This is the fourth most visited tourist destination in Western Australia (the 14th in the whole of Australia) with six million visitors a year.

The park is famous for its explosion of spring flowers celebrated every September in the Kings Park Festival.

The 42-acre (17ha) Botanic Garden was opened in 1965 and includes more than 1,700 species of wildflowers representing the extraordinary floral biodiversity of Western Australia. A 620-metre walkway runs through the Botanic Gardens and includes a spectacular elevated 52-metre glass and steel-arched bridge suspended amongst a canopy of tall eucalypts.

The location of the modern-day park has been sacred to the indigenous Nyoongar people and a central location in the Aboriginal Dreamtime for tens of thousands of years. Known as Kaarta (hill/head) Gar-Up (water-place of), it was used as a place of ritual and marriage, shelter, and for the gathering and hunting of food.

Greg Nannup - Kings Park Aboriginal Heritage Tour
Greg tells the Aboriginal story of the creation of the sky and landscape, including the Wave Rock